p_bubel said:
CanyonAg77 said:
He's definitely at least a half bubble off level. And he's a liar or can't Google. Our share of the money from the PUF also supports the Ag and Engineering Extension and Experiment systems.
And no one in their right mind wants to open up the debate on PUF funding anyway. Every other University will want a cut.
While a benefit obviously, the fund isn't a large chunk of the overall budget.
It makes a significant difference and creates some jealousy.
Non PUF schools rely upon revenue tuition bonds approved by the lege to fund building construction. And those don't come up and pass every session. PUF schools get their funding annually and don't have to beg the lege for funding, plus they can issue bonds against those moneys without lege approval.
A few years back, A&M caught tu off guard and built a med school in Round Rock. Our med school model has been 2 yr of classroom in CS followed by 2 yrs of clinicals, so adding another option for clinicals next to a nice shiny new hospital and a couple of nursing programs was an easy sell.
But then there started to be talk about doing classes in RR and making it a full 4 yr med school in tu's back yard. This caused tu to scramble to put together their own medical school in Austin. Hard to sell a brand new med school in Austin if there is one just up the road in RR, so tu had a limited window of opportunity if they wanted a school in Austin.
In the middle of all this, A&M and Texas State hatched a plan. Texas State needed another building for their nursing and teaching programs in RR, but they didn't need all of it right away. A&M needed classroom space. So Texas State sought funding for a new building and A&M was going to lease the excess space until Texas State needed it. The only problem was getting the funding from the lege.
There was a large funding bill for the non PUF campuses that comes up every so often and the money for the new building was included. No one came out and opposed the spending, but it died that year because it just sat around too long. Thus schools across the state were delayed in constructing new facilities because somehow no one bothered to get the bill to the floor for a vote. I don't think it was a coincidence that tu was playing catch up on a medical school at the same time and the dead bill delayed plans for A&M to expand giving tu enough time to get their med school off the ground.
Anyway, my friend who teaches at Texas State complained how A&M and tu get funding to build whatever they want and the other schools don't get their funding. All the other schools would love to tap the PUF to have freedom to build without having to go to the lege for funding.
It may be a small part of the overall budget but it is specifically for construction and not general operating expenses. And creates a huge advantage for the PUF schools.